I WANT people to be able to make serious bank on their queer comics!
I know, right??
And yeah, I genuinely think the appeal relied a lot on hitting people whose feelings were "I read and enjoy fic with these IRL hockey players, so I can flesh out the thin parts of canon with my existing knowledge/assumption/fanon backstory for the people these characters are references to." If you show up with that background, great! If not, then yeah, it's just...cute, in a non-gripping way.
...plus, for a lot of the readers who got really into the beginning and dropped out somewhere along the way, there was a lot of "you get enough compelling hooks to build up a bunch of theories and expectations in your head, and it's only after years more updates that you realize the comic isn't going to deliver."
The set I read was just two books -- Bitty's freshman/sophomore year in book 1, junior/senior year in book 2 -- and I could've easily put it down after book 1. Honestly, a big part of why I went for book 2 was the vague memories that FFA had massive, multi-hundred-comment discussions about this, including a whole lot about a character who seemed to only have one appearance, and I was curious what that was about.
Turns out he didn't do much in book 2 either. The fannish interest was part "he's a reference to a guy who's a Hockey RPF darling" and part "early on, the author dropped a bunch of hints about how much she liked the character and how big he was going to be later," which some readers took to heart even though you wouldn't necessarily get it from the comic alone.
(Seems like maybe he had the big role in her original plot outline? But for whatever reason, the series diverged enough over the years of writing that it just never happened.)
no subject
I know, right??
And yeah, I genuinely think the appeal relied a lot on hitting people whose feelings were "I read and enjoy fic with these IRL hockey players, so I can flesh out the thin parts of canon with my existing knowledge/assumption/fanon backstory for the people these characters are references to." If you show up with that background, great! If not, then yeah, it's just...cute, in a non-gripping way.
...plus, for a lot of the readers who got really into the beginning and dropped out somewhere along the way, there was a lot of "you get enough compelling hooks to build up a bunch of theories and expectations in your head, and it's only after years more updates that you realize the comic isn't going to deliver."
The set I read was just two books -- Bitty's freshman/sophomore year in book 1, junior/senior year in book 2 -- and I could've easily put it down after book 1. Honestly, a big part of why I went for book 2 was the vague memories that FFA had massive, multi-hundred-comment discussions about this, including a whole lot about a character who seemed to only have one appearance, and I was curious what that was about.
Turns out he didn't do much in book 2 either. The fannish interest was part "he's a reference to a guy who's a Hockey RPF darling" and part "early on, the author dropped a bunch of hints about how much she liked the character and how big he was going to be later," which some readers took to heart even though you wouldn't necessarily get it from the comic alone.
(Seems like maybe he had the big role in her original plot outline? But for whatever reason, the series diverged enough over the years of writing that it just never happened.)